While the Ravens won't knee-cap Brady before Sunday's AFC Championship Game rematch with the Patriots, Pees says he might have the next best thing on his roster. Linebacker Terrell Suggs, fresh off a two-sack performance against Peyton Manning and the Broncos, harbors widely known disdain for Brady.

"I think it's because he doesn't get to him that much," Cody said. "Brady's his nemesis because Brady always gets the ball out on time. You really never get a solid hit on him, and then every time you do get a hit on him, Brady's always whining about a flag."

Cody says Suggs has a list of quarterbacks who have yet to feel his wrath in earnest. Surely, Manning was checked off last weekend. What about Ben Roethlisberger, quarterback of the division rival Pittsburgh Steelers?

Suggs, 30, has declined to speak with the news media for several weeks and seldom interacts with reporters -- except for his habit of interrupting teammates' interviews with an unsettling gaze into the television camera.

While Suggs declined to be interviewed for this story, the numbers support Cody's theory.

In 18 career games against Roethlisberger and the Steelers, Suggs has 18.5 sacks, with five in two playoff games. In four games vs. Brady, Suggs has three sacks, but none in last year's AFC Championship Game, a 23-20 loss in Foxborough, Mass. That was before Suggs tore his Achilles in the offseason and spent the first six weeks of the regular season on the shelf. Suggs tore his biceps Dec. 2 and missed two more games.

On top of that, the reigning defensive player of the year had a cache of guns removed from his home by police after his longtime girlfriend, Candace Williams, filed a protective order against him in November. She alleged in September that he punched her in the neck and dragged her beside his car. The order was dropped in December, and she and Suggs married days later.

Suggs called 2012 a "weird season" in his most recent media appearance, which came on the day teammate Ray Lewis announced he would retire at the conclusion of the playoffs. Lewis, Suggs and Ed Reed have been key factors in Baltimore's dominance on defense for the better part of a decade, but Lewis and Reed are nearing the end of their careers, the defense doesn't have the same pop, and even Suggs has lost a step, a teammate said.

"I remember when he came in here, he was a freak. So fast. Faster than he is now," defensive tackle Ma'ake Kemoeatu said.

Kemoeatu said Suggs makes up for it with refined technique and obsessive film study. In defensive meetings, only two players take more notes than Suggs, he said: Lewis and Reed.

"He's always been a master of his craft," linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo, who joined the team in 2008, said of Suggs. "He was great when I got here, but now he understands his own mortality, so he's trying to be one of the greatest."

Ayanbadejo says the bulk of the maturing happened between the 2009 and 2010 seasons, when Suggs lost about 20 pounds and rededicated himself to the game after collecting 4.5 sacks in 13 starts.

But the transformation didn't hurt his odd sense of humor. Teammates say he's constantly joking, especially on Wednesdays -- study-heavy days for the team -- and Saturdays before game days. He'll rant about cartoons or creep slowly behind a teammate during an interview, close enough to feel Suggs' breath on his neck.

"He's unique," linebacker Paul Kruger said. "He's somebody I've learned a lot from as far as being able to handle yourself in football. It can get so serious at times. You need a little bit of comic relief."

And Suggs knows how to drop a hint. As the only player in the locker room with a flat-screen TV in his locker, Suggs occasionally will show a movie after practice, with the volume on full blast.

This week, Suggs played one of his favorites: The Shawshank Redemption, the tale of a man wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of his wife and her lover. Over decades, he tunnels his way to freedom. The message wasn't lost on Suggs' teammates.